current renovation

 

I can’t believe it’s been over 2 months since the last post!  Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much.  Those months were full of work- but nothing you can take a picture of.  Lots of contractor interviews, phone calls, negotiations, contracts, budgets…  who knew it would take that long?  But we finally have everything all flushed out and it’s go time!  This week was Official Construction Week #1 (of 17)

The plans were submitted to the city to get the building permit (cross your fingers for us).  In the meantime the construction team is setting up and cleaning out the place- hauling out the demo mess we made, and finishing some of the demo work we didn’t get to.  Stay tuned for progress shots!

The bid set went  out today… whew!

After hours of drawing on countless Saturdays and late-night weekdays, it’s done.  Thanks everyone for your input over the past few painful months.  Now we get to know a whole different kind of pain as the plans take shape…

You saw on Monday Jason’s spectacular brick work in the studio-sized Loft Apartment (Loft 1R).  Although it’s small, it’s one of my favorite spaces in the building.  It’s just got a really great feel to it.  One of the last layout decisions to make is what to do with the ever-so-tiny and (and very awkward kitchen)…

What makes it awkward is not only its size, but all of the openings.  So many openings, so little wall space!  There’s a window that sits too low to be above a kitchen counter, a door to an outside patio/ fire escape, and a door that goes down to the basement.  This last door is especially strange because you can also access the basement from the front stairwell… so the one in the back is not really needed, just takes up wall space.  This kitchen also has the last standing original pantry unit.  Remember the really cool one upstairs I blogged about (and subsequently decided to do away with)?   Now we have to decide what to do with this one…

Check out the 3 Options below and weigh in:

Option A:    Replace what was there… a small sink and a small cabinet next to it.  The stove and fridge go the only place they fit.  Little counter space, definitely not for someone who likes to cook.  But you keep the original pantry, and have room for a small table.

Option B:  Put the stove and fridge against the wall, and let the sink jut out into the middle of the kitchen in an island, with stools to sit at the counter (this is the ground floor so doing that shouldn’t be difficult)…  Keeps the pantry, you have a little more convenient workspace but no room for any table.

Option C:  Forget the pantry (sniff sniff) and put the fridge in the space that was previously an unusable (and unnecessary) hallway.  You then only access the basement through the main hallway at the front door.  Put the sink in front of the window and wrap the counter around… with stools at the end to sit at.  There will be no room for a kitchen table but this has the best workspace by far.  The window, which needs to be replaced anyway, will need to be raised to clear the counter.

We think we know which one we like the best, but put in your vote!

Urbanspace Lesson No. 0003:  Don’t give a contractor his final payment until his work is totally, completely done.  Even if the guy’s a friend…  bummer on that one.

The first wave of demo is done, although not exactly to the level we paid the guy for.  We’ve pretty much accepted that we’re going to have to finish it off for ourselves, and have the General Contractor do the rest when he comes on-board.  In the meantime, we took a break from fervious drafting to do a little real-world labor, so we could feel a little better that something physical is happening too.

We have been playing with the ideas of exposed brick, but were unsure of how much work that would actually take.  We experimented and chipped, by hand,  most of the plaster off of one of the small chimneys in an upstairs bedroom.  “We” meaning mostly Jason because it turns out I am pretty worthless at chiseling.  After about 2 hours of work, about 20SF were exposed and it looked pretty good.

This weekend we sprung for a Rotary Hammer w/ a Chisel bit and… wow!  It’s kind of funny now that we did any of it by hand.  We went into Loft 1R (the tiniest of the bunch) and that thing practically melted the plaster right off.  The progress below happened in about an hour:

Small changes like this really seem to make a big difference- I swear I could feel the whole building’s spirits lift as it breathed a sigh of relief!

Thanks to some of our friends out there in Facebookland for last week’s “social media design review,”  coming to the rescue and talking out some of the pros and cons of the layout for this space.

We decided to forego the lofted bed and save it for another apartment that actually needs it.  In our efforts to do “one neat-o thing” in every apartment, we really worked this one to make it something special.  We had lamented the loss of the pocket doors in the upstairs lofts and figured this would be a great place to bring them back.  Opening the bedroom up to the living/dining area makes the whole apartment feel so spacious and just neat.  I know I always wanted a place with pocket doors like that…

This was honestly the one space in the building we felt had the least potential to be something cool, and it has turned into something we’re really excited about… so thanks again everybody!

With the first pass of demo finished, we’re scrambling over here to finalize the construction drawings.  Once those are ready, we can get some contractor bids, get one on board, and really get rolling.  What we’re currently debating is the layout of  Loft 1F.  It’s going to be the equivalent of a 1 bedroom, we’re just not sure about the bed!  Check the options out and weigh in…

Option A is for the more standard 1 bedroom apartment… a big closet, real bed on a real floor.  You lose some living/ dining space but it still functions as a pretty nice apartment.  Note that the small window in this bedroom is kind of a joke- it looks onto the lovely wall next door about 3 feet away.  To help get some natural light into this space, we’ve put in a nifty polycarbonate transom window (budget permitting of course- ha!)

Option B is to loft the bed above the kitchen with a rolling ladder that can go up to the bed or access a bookshelf on the other side that also acts as a railing (bookshelf and rolling ladder budget permitting once again)  This frees up a lot more space on the main floor and just looks cooler.  One of us has lived in a few apartments like this now and loved them… although she does admit to sometimes yearning for “a real bed”  Another downfall of this one is there is no closet in the apartment, but we may be able to rearrange the kitchen to get a closet and kitchen under that loft.

The main question here is to loft or not to loft.  We’re not sure about what the local code guys here in Pittsburgh have to say about “sleeping lofts,” and from our research it really seems to vary from city to city.  So as we debate we put it out to you people out there in blogland…  lofted bed or no lofted bed?

 

As our demo guy has been working on the place, it seems the whole neighborhood has checked in.  Interesting.  Apparently the place was, at one time, a grocery store.  Neat.  So far the best comment wins with “oh please tell me this ain’t gonna be Sect. 8 again.”  Oh lady, we hope not!

Not much new to report so take a look at these news clippings  I found.  All stuff that went down at one point in time in this place.  It sure has had an interesting life…  Onwards and upwards we hope!

Look, finally you get to see a plan of the place!  Now you can help answer some questions.  With so much of the demo done, it’s time to start figuring this stuff out…  the issue for today is the new bedroom in
Loft 4.
The room in the bottom left corner used to be a kitchen, but we’ve moved that and with the addition of a door [and closet?] it’s now a bedroom.  The question here is what to do for said closet.  The bedroom in a very similar loft downstairs had an old shallow pantry so we ripped that out- pretty much a no-brainer.  The bedroom in this one has a cool built-in pantry unit with shelving.  Our first instinct was “keep it, it’s neat!”  But it also is right in the way of where the new closet would go.  And after seeing the chimney exposed in the other loft’s bedroom, we’re thinking it would be neat to expose it in this one as well  (with some elbow grease on the brick to expose that too)  but that means ditching the old pantry.  Opinions?

As far as the actual closet, we’ve wavered between:
a)  a long one along the stairwell (sketched in blue)  with the old pocket doors as sliding closet doors
b) a square one with a normal swing door in the corner where the old pantry was.  It will stick out into the room a few feet.
c) buying a big armoire from IKEA and calling it a day

Whaddya think?

Loft 4- Livingroom/ Kitchen

Loft 3- Livingroom/ Kitchen

Loft 1F

This weekend was a landmark…  the good part is the bulk of the grunt work is done, but that is kind of sad too because the big transformations are also pretty much done.  There are still all these little great moments left though,  For example,  walking into each of these spaces on a sunny Saturday morning,  really getting to feel them as they are going to be.   After only seeing them in the darkness of the week prior, this was really exciting.

Haven’t you heard it’s VIA week?  There’s not much time for blogging with so much awesome to be had, so we leave you with this image for the weekend… one of the numerous children’s toys we found buried in one of the pocket door walls.  Oh, did we mention it’s VIA weekend?  Giddy-up!